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CHC tells Senedd members of need for ‘long-term rent framework’ in Wales
Community Housing Cymru (CHC) has called on the Welsh government to agree a multi-year rent settlement with the sector.
Clarissa Corbisiero, deputy chief executive of CHC, said: “A long-term rent framework is absolutely central to our ability as a housing association sector to be able to build the homes that we need and to be able to invest in existing homes.”
Ms Corbisiero made the comments on Wednesday during a Local Government and Housing Committee meeting, where a range of industry spokespeople gave evidence on social housing supply.
“We’re really pleased that the [housing] minister has extended the current policy for a further year,” she said, noting that it built in “some certainty”.
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Last month, Julie James, the Welsh cabinet secretary for housing, local government and planning, announced that social landlords will be able to set their own rent increases for 2025-26 for an extra year to the end of March 2026.
This is dependent on September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) figure falling between 0% and 3%.
In October last year, Ms James announced that social housing landlords in Wales would be able to increase rents by a maximum of 6.7% from April next year.
The Welsh government’s current five-year settlement, announced in 2019, allows rents to be increased by a maximum of CPI +1%.
Ms Corbisiero’s evidence to the committee session follows CHC’s written submission to the inquiry in April in which the body called for “indicative multi-year settlements”.
“But we’re slowly running out of ground here in terms of the current policy,” she added.
“We need a swift but detailed conversation with Welsh government and partners about what comes next so that we have a policy that balances affordability, sustainability and viability, so we can keep that investment going in social housing.”
Ms Corbisiero also called for the Transitional Accommodation Capital Programme (TACP) to be extended, which has been used to support a range of projects by local authorities and social landlords to create much-needed extra housing capacity.
TACP “has allowed housing facilities to scale up their acquisitions programmes” and “to think more broadly about reconfiguring existing stock”, she said.
While the focus should be on new builds, Ms Corbisiero said that “we cannot wait for everything to come through the planning consenting system, we need to think really creatively and TACP is important in that”.
She added: “It was massively oversubscribed last year, from what I understand, so there’s a huge appetite.
“A longer-term and multi-year settlement for TACP, making it part of the grant mix, would really help.”
The call for longer term rent settlements and TACP comes as Ms James told Inside Housing this week that Wales’ 20,000 social rent target will "be touch and go, but we’ll still make it".
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